Golf International Lifestyle - Issue 100

MARCH/APRIL 2011 GOLFINTERNATIONALMAG.COM 131

THE VERY BEST GOLF PROPERTY IN FRANCE / MEMORABILIA / MOTORING & MORE...

GOLF INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE MARCH/APRIL 2011

GOLFINTERNATIONALMAG.COMMARCH/APRIL 2011132

Here’s a question: what’s the differencebetween a ‘horizontal’ and a ‘vertical’wine tasting? Don’t laugh – it isn’twhat you think. Under the watchfuleye of Golf du Médoc patron, Henry

Martinet, I discovered that the first is a compari-son of different châteaux, in my case Margaux, allfrom the same year, while the second is an evalu-ation of one particular châteaux’s best offeringsfrom several consecutive years.

If you’re the sort of golfer who likes the sound

of any wine tasting after a day’s golf, then there’sa fair chance you like playing in France as muchas in Spain and Portugal.

With well over 400 courses, and a growingnumber of enthusiastic club members, golf inFrance is on a roll. While the number of players inthe UK has declined over the past 10 years, inFrance it has actually increased from 277,000 to410,000. There is even talk of the 2018 Ryder Cuppossibly going to Le Golf National near Paris.

Many of us love playing over there, althoughfew are as obsessed as Francophile P.G. Wode-house, who was famously arrested by the advanc-ing Germans on the Le Touquet links, seeminglyoblivious to the fall of Dunkirk.

Primelocation.com estimate half a million Brits

have homes in France, and the idea of a holiday oreven retirement home, like Bertie Wooster’s cre-ator’s, next to a French course certainly appeals.

The courses in Normandy and Brittany are wellplaced for long weekends, but with the weathernot much better than in Kent or Sussex, thoselooking for more permanent bases usually headfurther south. Three favourite destinations arethe Dordogne in the central southwest, the Coted’Azure on the Mediterranean coast, and the Paysde la Loire around Orleans.

House values in the three areas differ substan-tially. According to Immoprix, the average homeprice in the Dordogne last year was €134,1000; inthe Var around St Tropez, €392,800; and on thebanks of the Loire, €167,200.

A French home and hole in oneFresh croissant before a round, a knock-down-drag-out lunch washed down by a bottle of the local vinordinaire afterwards – what could be finer? PPeetteerr SSwwaaiinn explores the terroir of French golfing property


DORDOGNE AND AQUITAINEFor many buyers, the great appeal of France overSpain and Portugal is the food and wine, sowhere better to start than the region famous forBordeaux, Perigord truffles and foie gras.

Hampshire-based IT executive Brett Smith andhis wife Angie first stayed at Château des Vigiersnear Bergerac on a birthday break. They liked theset-up so much, they exchanged their gîte in Brit-tany for a small cottage on a courtyard betweenthe main hotel and the 27 very tasty DonaldSteel-designed holes.

“I’m a keen golfer, and there’s always a groupof British lads here to play with, plus the othercourses nearby,” says Brett. Flybe whisks themfrom Southampton to Bergerac, four hours door-to-door.

Thirty-odd properties have been builtaround the stunning 16th-century château. Atwo-bedroom cottage is currently for sale at£265,000, and a timber-built lakeside house for£495,000. “We visit about six times a year,”says Brett, “and, in between trips, the hotelrents it out for us.” The clubhouse has a swim-ming pool and a good restaurant, with evenfiner dining in the hotel, plus a vineyard, allwithin range of a good five-iron.

“Prices in the Dordogne have fallen during therecession,” says Joanna Leverett of Savills. “So theperception is that now is a good time to buy.”

PROPERTY

(Clockwise from left):In addition to the 36holes of spectacularchampionship golf,Golf du Medoc boastsa luxurious hotel &spa, making this theideal base from whichto explore the delightsof Bordeaux towardsthe Atlantic coast(Below): Chateau desVigiers, near Berg-erac, features 27holes by acclaimed architect Donald Ross

GOLFINTERNATIONALMAG.COM MARCH/APRIL 2011134

Over towards the Atlantic coast, Bordeaux is atthe heart of a region selling itself as the quintes-sential ‘Golf and Wine’ destination. With 12 clubsin and amongst villages like St Emillon, Pauillacand Margaux, it’s difficult to argue. In fact, thecourse at Margaux falls well short of the localgrands crus, but Golf du Médoc is stunning.

The 6,917-yard Châteaux course, which hostedthe 1999 French Open, won by Retief Goosen, hasa linksy feel, while the Vignes 18-holer is aimedmore at mid and high handicappers. Both areserviced by the luxurious and very golf-friendly79-room hotel and spa, which is an excellent basefrom which to explore the locale – and enjoy ahorizontal tasting or three.

None of these Bordeaux courses have propertyattached to them, but you can pick up a localthree-bedroom village house for £150,000, whilesomething bigger, older and with a pool need costno more than £200,000 through a specialist localagent like Sextantproperties.com.

CÔTE D’AZUR AND PROVENCEFor those who like playing on the beach as well asin the bunkers, a property on one of the Côted'Azur’s 18 courses is a hole-in-one. According toJoanna Leverett: ‘The French Riviera has beenfirmly established for decades as one of the mostprestigious places for second-home propertyworldwide. There’s no oversupply, so prices haveremained strong.’

Unlike the Portuguese and the Spanish, theFrench have built very few integrated golf, hoteland housing resorts, but there are a couple ofgood ones overlooking or within a short drive ofthe Mediterranean.

Just above St Tropez, Golf de Gassin is très chic– rather like the locals. Not that long at just 6,611yards, there’s practically no rough because the 18immaculately conditioned holes wind through aprotected nature reserve.

Impeccably designed small townhouses withviews over vineyards and the bay of St Tropezstart at €693,000. Three tennis courts, a 38-suitehotel and excellent clubhouse restaurant makethis an ideal destination for heavy hitters.

Thirty-five minutes from Marseilles, the Seve-designed Pont Royal course is part of a golf andcountry club near Mallemort that has been matur-ing over the past 20 years. With a David Leadbet-ter Academy, the 6,835-yard course is just one of16 in the region made famous by Peter Mayle’sbestselling A Year in Provence.

Four developers have created separate ‘villages’in and around the course, but with constructionsubstantially complete, now is a good time to takea look. Sextant Properties are offering apartmentsfrom €160,000 and townhouses from €260,000.A detached villa with a pool costs from €495,000,

(Above): The pink pastelshades of hillside villas atGassin, above St Tropez.(Left & below): One- andtwo-bedroomed cottagesstart at £140,000 at Golfde Sologne, occupying a450-acre estate in theLoire Valley.(Opposite): Heavy hittersare encouraged to checkout the superlative Robertvon Hagge course at LesBordes, 90 minutes southof Paris, a design regularlyvoted as one of the finestcourses in Europe


PROPERTY

with potential rental returns in the region of£1,500 a week in high season.

PAYS DE LA LOIREFor British buyers who think they know theFrench property market, this may be a new dé-partement to consider. The Loire Valley, startingat Orleans just 90 miles south of Paris, representshistory, fine wine and, of course, dreamy riversideChâteaux. Mick Jagger likes it so much, he has hisown, La Fourchette, near Tours. The new part ofthe equation for les rosbifs is golf.

Golf de Sologne is a 450-acre forested estatewith four lakes, a delightful 19th-centurychâteau and an 18-hole course at its heart. Ac-quired by French developers five years ago, ahotel with 99 apartments, spa, 91 terraced cot-tages, and 168 villas are to be built in tradi-tional half-timbered style.

One- and two-bedroom cottages start at£140,000, with the larger detached villas goingfor £235,000 upwards. They can all be boughtthrough the French ‘sale and leaseback’ scheme,which avoids the 19.6% VAT that would other-wise be payable on top of these prices. In ex-change, you get so many weeks usage a year plusa guaranteed ‘leaseback’ income, so it’s ideal ifyou can only afford to spend a month a yeardown there. For outright ownership, you just paythe extra VAT.

“It particularly appeals to families,” says RobertGreen of Cluttons Resorts, the selling agents. “Theweather is mild and there’s plenty to do – an

equestrian centre, swimming pool, eight golfcourses within 30 miles, cycling and fishing, plusMichelin-starred restaurants and the Loirechâteaux, all within an hour by train from Paris.”

One of those nearby clubs is Les Bordes withits peerless Robert von Hagge course, the Châteaud’Yquem of French golf. Club membership, cost-ing a cool €1 million, entitles you to buy a lodgefor €1.35 million and up. It is, as they say, a verybig ask, but the region has identified golf as a wayof attracting new interest, and who are we toargue.

So, Portugal and Spain have more courses, somore choice, but for a certain kind of Britishbuyer, France still has that je ne sais quoi, whichis, at the right price, quite irresistible.

CONTACTS:

Château de Vigiers: www.vigiers.com

Golf Du Médoc: www.hotelgolfdumedoc.com

Golf de Gassin:www.knightfrank.co.uk/international

Pont Royal: www.sextantproperties.com

Golf de Sologne: www.cluttonsresorts.com

Les Bordes: www.lesbordes.com

1. Pebble Beach. If there’s one course you simply have to play before you die, it’s Pebble....

2. The Rum Dums in the clubhouse at Lyford Cay on New Providence in the Bahamas. OK, so the course isn’t world-class but the barman is. Willie Sands invented this particular nectar: 11/2 oz white Bacardi, 2 oz syrup, 3 oz lemon juice, dash of egg white, 1 oz dark rum (float). Combine the first four, shake well, pour over ice, then float dark rum on top. With a Cohiba, golfing heaven.

3. The tee-shot at the first hole at Machrihanish. This is often called the best opening hole in links golf, and it is.

4. Monte Rei, Portugal. From the moment you arrive when a car jockey takes your car, a guy cleans your clubs, and the caddy master starts organizing your buggy, to the 18 superb holes of golf, to the terrace overlooking the course, and the El Bulli chef looking after the main restaurant in the palatial clubhouse, Monte Rei has the lot. This is how golf should be – I think it’s the best club in continental Europe.

5. Fairway to Hell. The Miami writer Carl Hiasen is best know for penning aseries of hysterical crime novels basedin his home state of Florida, a number of which have had the Hollywood treatment. In this book, he details the agonies of a middle-aged hacker trying to rediscover his youth, nerve and game. Simply the funniest golf book ever written.

6. The Concession. Only a player like Nicklaus, in fact maybe only Nicklaus could have done it. The Ryder Cup, the European Tour and the game of golf have been the richer for one conceded two-foot putt, for a shot that was never played.

7. Sandy Lyle’s seven-iron out of the fairway bunker, 160 yards uphill to the flag, on the 18th at Augusta in the 1988 Masters. He couldn’t see the pin, so he lined up a cloud and hit it so close, the winning putt was almost a formality. That shot from that lie in that tournament was pure genius.

8. This year’s Open at Royal St George’s is a reason to celebrate one of the club’s former Presidents, and quite simply the best old-school golf writer of them all, Bernard Darwin. For 45 years from 1907, the grandson of Charles penned a golf column for The Times but his greatest achievement is the 1910 Golf Courses of the British Isles, a tome that did for Muirfield, St Andrews and Sunningdale what Vasaridid for the Renaissance masters. No golfing library is complete without it.

9. Tiger’s affair with a fire hydrant. OK, sohe’s brilliant but the last 15 months without him (he’s been around in bodybut hardly in spirit) has seen a spectacular resurgence in European golf, and British golf in particular. The eventreminded us all that he’s only human and now he’s back, well, who isn’t looking forward to this year’s majors?

10. When all else fails, my ‘go-to’ club, my Callaway 24 degree rescue. Ratherlike Viagra, it gets the ball up in the air faster and keeps it up longer...

The finest things in golf?

MY PERSONAL TOP 10


HISTORIC GOLF MAGAZINESI am having a clear out; are these golf magazinesworth keeping? I have about 30 of them. Elizabeth Pelham, Wolverhampton

It is rather apt that as Golf International cele-brates its 100th issue we should receive your let-ter and images of one of the very earliest golfingpublications – Golf Illustrated.

The very first golf magazine of its type firstappeared on 19 September 1890 and was titled,‘A Weekly Record of ‘Ye Royal and Ancient’Game’. In 1899 the title was rebranded ‘Golf Il-lustrated’ and so the stage was set for this pio-neering title to become one of Britain’s mostrespected and enduring golfing journals. Weekafter week it proclaimed that it was ‘The OnlyWeekly Golf Journal in the World. Established in1890’; and even up to the start of World War IIits cover price was 6 old pennies.

The contents of these early magazines (1900to 1930s) would often include a diary of golfingevents; book reviews; advice to younger golfers;letters to the editor; questions on rules and com-petition results – so not a million miles from thecontent you expect to find in the leading titlestoday. All in all, good reading and certainly greatresearch material for golfing historians.

Our reader’s pre-war Golf Illustrated maga-zines measure 12 x 9 inches and each contains30 or so pages. Front and rear covers are in redsand blues and the inside front cover is devotedto ‘Forthcoming Events’, comprising mainly Am-ateur events, both international and national.

And where today we see glossy adverts for TagHeuer, Ralph Lauren and Serengeti, in the 1930sthe equivalent full page adverts were from Map-pin & Webb and their silver golfing trophies; Lil-lywhites of Piccadilly Men’s Wear and TuborgLager. Towards the rear of the magazine there’sa ‘Where Golfers Stay’ section and also quite aselection of ‘classified's’.

They still make for a fascinating read with edi-torials on new golfing inventions, advertise-ments by club and ball makers – often withrudimentary graphics of the products. Regularwriters in the 1930s included such golfing jour-nalists as Charles Ambrose, P.B. Lucas, Guy Far-rar and P.A. Vaile. Historical golf enthusiasts –especially Bobby Jones fans – would be particu-larly interested in the 1930 (6 June edition) mag-azine with its centre-spread photograph titled‘The scene at the eighteenth Green in the morn-ing round of the final’. There are a further fourphotos of Jones in that particular magazine.

VALUE: Surprisingly these wonderful old maga-zines do not fetch as much as you might imagine;however they are sought after and do have aworth, especially to golfing researchers. At auctionI’d expect them to fetch between £8 and £10 each.

SIGNED GRAEME BAXTEROPEN CHAMPIONSHIP PRINTThe R & A donated to the St Andrews and St An-drews Kilrymont branch of the Rotary Club oneof only 2 prints signed by all 156 of the competi-tors at last year’s Open Championship. Obviouslyour goal now is to realise as much money as pos-sible for our charity causes and to that end wouldappreciate your opinion on how best to do this.Maybe one of your readers would like to buy it?Interested parties are welcome to contact me viathe email address below.Brian Gray, St [email protected]

In recent years the R & A has seen to it that acouple of limited edition prints (painted by theofficial Open Championship artist – in this caseGraeme Baxter’s rendition of the 18th hole onthe Old Course) are on display at the players’registration area. Once the official paperworkhas been taken care of every single player in thefield is invited to sign the mount surroundingboth prints in pencil. (Why pencil? Because inkfades, especially if it is subjected to direct sun-light.) It’s a simple request that results in the R &A having at their disposal two virtually identicalsigned prints (I say virtually because the signa-tures on each do vary, and so each print is actu-ally a unique piece of commemorative art). LastAugust the R & A presented the two prints to thetwo local St. Andrews Rotary Clubs to help themraise monies for their charities.VALUE: Should this piece come to a traditional golfauction I don’t believe it would fetch more than£5,000. A lot of money, certainly, but I am con-vinced that your Rotary Club would do much betterby going down the Charity Dinner route, wherethere’s always a good chance a benefactor mightoffer several times that figure for the print. A tradi-tional golf auction generally caters for golf memo-rabilia dealers, collectors and enthusiasts and

Now in his 10th year as a contributor, Gi’s auction-room ex-pert Kevin McGimpsey answersmore of your letters and emails,this issue contemplating theprovenance and value of a mixedbag, including a collection of his-toric golf magazines, a signedprint from last year’s Open at StAndrews and a highly collectibleceramic Scottie dog...

Right, who will start the bidding?


MEMORABILIA

cannot compete with a typicalsports charity auction.

SILVER-PLATED INK-STANDI recently bought this silver-platedgolfing inkstand in an antiques shop inthe Cotswolds for £350. Was this aboutright? Terry Parker, Conway N. Wales

This impressive decorative electroplatedgolfing inkstand measures 11 inches longand 8 inches high. It was made around 1910by James Dixon & Sons of Sheffield who were inthe business of manufacturing silver, plate andBritannia metal decorative pieces. It is a wellthought of company and their quality was al-ways good. For example J.D. & S exhibited at theGreat Exhibition in 1851, being awarded severalprizes in different classes for silver and Britan-nia metal. From 1848 they excelled in producinga varied range of electroplated metal-ware.

Few readers would object to owning this ink-stand complete with its centre piece Edwardian-style golfer still with his club and two glassinkwells with hinged lids. It appears to be factoryfresh in condition and there are no defects to theglass inkwells.VALUE: Golfing collectors eagerly seek out suchbeautiful pieces. Obviously the ultimate is onemade in solid silver but from a distance it is some-times hard to differentiate plate from silver. I amoften asked whether an inscription to such an ob-ject adds to or detracts to its value. To an extent itwill depend on the importance and significance ofthe Club or the player in question. At auction Iwould expect bidding to begin at £250 and con-clude at £400.

CERAMIC SCOTTIE FIGURINEI bought my Scottie Dog at a golf auction in theearly 1980s. I think I paid £125 for it. What is itworth in today’s market please? Toby Elswis Worthy Down, Hants

During the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s British ball man-ufacturers supplied club professionals who soldtheir product with countertop advertising fig-urines. These were provided free for display onthe shop counter, with the aim of encouragingsales. In previous issues of this magazine we

have covered the ones advertising Dunlop andPenfold golf balls.

The North British Rubber Company commis-sioned the Sylvac Company in the 1940s and ’50sto create black pottery replicas of their logo, aScottie dog, holding in its mouth one of theirround dimple balls. Sylvac already made bothblack and white Scotties for a whisky companyand the mould was altered so that the dog held agolf ball. The ceramic dog so made measures 11inches high; some were presented on 2¾ inch highblue plinths with the slogan: ‘North British: TheChoice of Champions’. These are rare. The colourof the tartan dog collar is either red or green andsome balls feature the words ‘North British’.VALUE: Good news for our reader! In this mintcondition at auction itshould fetch near to£800. The ones fittedto plinths are veryrare indeed andshould fetch over£1,000. So a verygood financial return.

SIGNED OPENPROGRAMMESAbout 10 years ago Iwas fortunate enoughto get my two OpenChampionship pro-grammes signed inperson by PeterThomson. Does hisautograph increase

the values of the programmes?Ernest Highes, Prestwick, Scotland

These 1956 and 1958 Open Golf Champi-onship programmes appear to be in agood clean condition without stains ortears. As you are no doubt aware, PeterThomson won the 1956 Open at RoyalLiverpool with an aggregate score of 286and in 1958 at Royal Lytham with an ag-gregate score of 278. Having alreadyclaimed the ’54 and ’55 Championships,Thomson would ultimately secure atotal of five wins with his fifth and finalvictory at Royal Birkdale in 1965.VALUE: If they came to auction un-signed they would probably be of-

fered as one lot with an estimate of £150.However because they are signed that low esti-mate would rise to £200.

Among the highlightsthis issue, this silverplate inkstand wouldbe highly sought after,fetching up to £400at auction; the Scottiedog ceramic wasused as a point-of-sale advertising for agolf ball company,and is highly valued ataround £800

Do you have an item of golfing memorabilia you would like Kevin to appraise? If so, send your letter and best photographs to Kevin McGimpsey at this address:

PO BOX 120, Deeside, Flintshire, N. Wales. Alterna-tively, email him with with jpegs:[email protected]

Don’t miss Kevin’s personal account of a rather special practice round during the Masters at Au-gusta in 1986 – see page 102.

1. Caddying at Augusta (see page 102)

2. Adding a Haskell golf ball to my golf ball collection

3. Being photographed with the rarest golfing point of sale figurine, the Silver Queen

4. Standing on the 1st tee at Nefyn Golf Club

5. Driving you car into St. Andrews

6. Having a great lunch at Muirfield before playing

7. Receiving an invitation from Mr Patino to play Valderrama

8. A tour of the St Andrews Golf Museum

9. Listening to my brother’s victory speech at the 2003 Walker Cup at Ganton

10. Writing for GI for 10 years and the thrill of opening a magazine to see your article

The finest things in golf?

MY PERSONAL TOP 10


Unlike Volkswagen, who recentlywheeled out Le Mans 24 Hours leg-end Jackie Ickx as their new ambassa-dor at a Jetta launch on thesomewhat spurious basis that he,

erm, keeps a Caravelle camper van at his home inSouth Africa, Mercedes-Benz can lay a rathermore genuine claim to a working relationshipwith Stirling Moss.

Moss, relentlessly lauded as the greatest drivernever to win a World Championship (In Formula 1he finished second to Fangio three years in a rowand then once, in 1958, to Hawthorn), started rac-ing for Mercedes in 1954.

Back in those hilariously brave, open cockpitand goggles days, a driver’s face would quicklybe thoroughly black and white minstrel’ed by aheady blend of exhaust soot, unburned fuel andshredded rubber. On their return to the pits,drivers were accustomed to reaching for the oilyrag to try and remove at least some of the accu-mulated detritus. When Moss pulled in after hisfirst trial for Mercedes, he was met – with aPrussian click of the heels – by a man at atten-tion holding a porcelain bowl of steaming hotwater, a bar of soap and an Egyptian cottontowel. ‘Well, if that’s how it’s going to be’ hethought, ‘I’d better sign up…’

There followed perhaps his most famous racevictory; the 1955 Mille Miglia, in which, armedwith an open-topped 300 SLR, he dispatched1000 miles in a cool 10 hours, 7 minutes and 48

seconds, for once beating Fangio in the process.In the same year, Mercedes produced its firstroad-going iteration of that car, the gullwing-doored 300 SL.

This SLS, the natural successor to that leg-endary brute, has been 55 years in the making,and I have one weekend and just 250 miles tofind out whether it’s been worth the wait…

Now, whilst you’ll inevitably find yourself regu-larly clocked if driving Italian exotica, a Ferrari orLamborghini eyeballing these days tends to takethe form of a confirmatory glance rather than aprotracted stare. But sit in an SLS, and so relent-lessly will you be ogled that you’ll begin to fretabout having inadvertently left the house withouttrousers. Never before have I experienced suchpressed metal spectator persistence.

To me, the SLS is something of a hymn bookon wheels; an extraordinary meld of ancientand modern. In profile, the ancient prevails,with a bonnet long enough to accommodate afamily of four on a fortnight’s holiday and thecockpit so far astern that you sit pretty much asfar back as possible without actually being ontop of the rear axle.

The cab itself is entirely reminiscent of theoriginal car, quite bulbous and rounded, with a re-markably upright windscreen pillar by today’s su-

percar standards and relatively small door glaz-ing. Indeed, that cabin is so small and low in rela-tion to the overall size of the beast that you’d beforgiven for thinking it had spent time in a classic,earl Harley-style American chop shop.

From dead ahead, though, the presentationis far more modern, and from dead astern (myfavourite viewpoint and that most common toother road users) it’s positively futuristic by thestandards of the rest of the car, and also rein-forces just how massively wide this machineactually is.

That chop shop imagery is heightened by theuse of a bespoke, semi-matt paint intended, pre-sumably, to be reminiscent of a bare aluminiumracing finish and nod at the cars all-alloy con-struction. I had to sign a document promisingnot to take it through one of those threshing millcar washes…

Huge alloys with gold brake callipers denotethe presence of ceramic composite discs so largethey almost fill the front wheel. Massive stoppingpower is assured, but you might want to thinktwice about ticking that £8,140 option box, sincethey need to be up to operating temperature towork most effectively, and that sort of tempera-ture is achieved only by driving so fast you mightas well simply sear straight down to the nearest

MERCEDES-BENZ SLS AMG, 6.3 litre V8 GULLWING

In the shape of the gullwing SLS, a racing thoroughbred 55 years in themaking, Mercedes Benz has fused historical open-cockpit motoringwith the sort of technology usually associated with Formula 1. Sadly,Anthony Ffrench-Constant had just 250 miles to give his verdict

Merc’s ultimate flight of fancy


police station and surrender.Actually, such self-sacrifice is unnecessary, be-

cause most of the boot is a spoiler which pops upautomatically when you pass 70mph, thus mak-ing it a particularly useful flag for lurking con-stabulary.

Those eye-catching gullwing doors work sur-prisingly well, too; a handle oozes from low onthe door when you plip the key, and minimal ef-fort raises the door. You can’t stand under it, butit’s no aerobic chore to stoop down and clamberover a wide, carbon-fibre dressed cill which al-ready displayed signs of heel scuffing on the car Idrove. Not only are Blakeys Segs wearers advisedto steer well clear, but the rest of us might con-sider the wearing of carpet slippers to get overthis issue. Just don’t park in a puddle.

And before you ask, the doors are designedspecifically to work in Tokyo’s tightest multi-storey car park, which means they open to aheight of just 1.8 metres and, with both doorsfully open, the car is only 36 cm wider overall.

Sadly, after an entry of veritable street carnivalstature, the interior leaves one feeling a tad toovillage fete for my liking. It’s all beautifully made,of course, but lacks real drama. The only retrotouch is howitzer-style air vents finished in a cun-ning plastic called Noble, which has enough metalin the mix to not only look the part, but also feelcold to the touch first thing in the morning.

Least wholesome is the driver’s instrument bin-nacle, which shuns traditional Mercedes black-on-white clarity in favour of all metal finishes which,as in an Aston Martin (though we are mercifullyspared lilac back-lighting here), do the user nofavours and aren’t as clear as one would like.

Sitting so far back beneath the bonnet that it’sentirely behind the front axle to give the best pos-sible weight distribution in a front engined reardrive car, the most powerful naturally aspiratedV8 in the world barks into life with a burst of un-solicited throttle in the manner of all modern per-formance cars. Start up stealth is out of thequestion.

AMG’s 6.3 litre V8 has been even further tweakfor installation here, now developing a whole-some 563bhp and 479lb ft of torque. Via a dual-clutch, seven-speed automatic transmission withflappy paddle override, this will fling the SLS atthe horizon, from a standstill to 62mph in just3.8 seconds, and on to 197mph.

Sitting this far back, you hear everything fromthe exhaust and surprisingly little combustionnoise from the engine itself. Even at full chat, withthe exhausts doing their best to replicate thesounds of the 7th Cavalry laying siege to an over-amplified bowl of Rice Krispies, little but theoleaginous threshing of expensive metal leaks aft.

On the move, the dual clutch makes for supersmooth progress, though manual paddle shiftmode finds it a little slow on the uptake by super-car standards. Smooth throttle inputs can benovice-challenging at low speeds too, most notice-ably when pulling onto roundabouts from astandstill. Too little throttle leaves you growling

nowhere and missing the gap. Too much, by wayof compensation, finds you yelling away like aboulder slung from a trebuchet.

At all times, power is, of course, gloriously ab-solute on demand. But the SLS is at its magnifi-cent best under a somewhat modulated throttle,wherein performance is still sufficient to see offpretty much anything else but progress becomesutterly, deliciously fluid, smooth and effortless.

Artfully putting the whole dubious conceptof even Mercedes’ own adaptive trick suspen-sion to the sword, the SLS rides on conventionalshock absorbers and double wishbones allround. Though undeniably on the firm side, thisset-up offers precisely the long-haul-comfortlevel of compromise between information andsuppleness you’d expect from a car with thesecapabilities.

Though its balance is sublime and levels of gripand traction are predictably astonishing, the SLS

doesn’t, in fact, encourage you to hoon around inthe manner of a mid-engined Italian. Rather, it of-fers the very grandest of gran turismo experi-ences; get in and devour Europe at relentlesspace, making absolutely sure you go anywhere viaa considerable chunk of Germany for an extendedbout of de-restricted face bending.

Destined, I suspect, to remain rare as HannibalLecter’s steak, an SLS may be afforded for as littleas, um, £168,345. The car I drove was so ladenwith AMG options and accessories that its pricetag actually overhauled its maximum speed, top-ping out at a thumping £205,680. However, apartfrom the £5,055 Bang and Olufsen stereo – whichis always going to lose out to those bellowing ex-hausts – I probably wouldn’t bother with any ofthe extras (£3,425 for a carbon fibre engine coveryou’ll never see?). Then again, if you’re in the mar-ket for a car such as this, you probably won’t quib-ble over the odd thirty grand here and there.

The figures are as you’d expect ofthe world’s most powerful naturallyaspirated V8 – 0-62 in just 3.8 sec-onds, while the ‘197’ plate fitted tothis model is a most specific refer-ence to the car’s maximum speed.And while the driver’s instrument bi-nacle is relatively basic, given theSLR’s supercar staus, the retro inte-rior works beautifully in the contextof the overall package – a roadsterwith a pedigree heritage

Golf International Lifestyle - Issue 100

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Transcript of Golf International Lifestyle - Issue 100